


Progress

by poeticname



Category: Tennis no Oujisama | Prince of Tennis
Genre: Crushes, Fluff, Introspection, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-05-28
Updated: 2013-05-28
Packaged: 2017-12-13 05:37:54
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,616
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/820616
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/poeticname/pseuds/poeticname
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Yanagi attempts to locate the point in time when he began to consider Akaya cute.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Progress

Yanagi Renji liked to consider himself very self-aware. He had fourty-two notebooks written on his own data, often took time for introspection, and occasionally asked Seiichi or Genichirou for their input so that his data on himself was more objective.

Taking this into account, the fact that he did not know when he began to consider Kirihara Akaya cute was perplexing.

It was certainly not an instant attraction. Yanagi was not attracted to first years, and Akaya was no exception. Nor did it begin when Akaya hit his growth spurt, so Yanagi was forced to conclude it was an attraction that he acquired after becoming emotionally attached to the boy.

This narrowed his search for the moment in time he began to consider Akaya cute by quite a bit. Yanagi had only begun spending extended time with him when he became a regular, which was one month and thirteen days into the current school year, and even then, their first fourty-two conversations were strictly tennis business.

Perhaps the lead-in to this attraction began when Yanagi accompanied Jackal, Marui, and Akaya on one of their after school expeditions for the sake of personal data collection and possible amusement. 

Yes, that seemed like a reasonable place to start. He had gone with them to the large gaming complex they frequented. 

He played against Akaya in a racing game that first time, and muttered calculations of odds under his breath while he did so in an attempt to grasp the new system placed in front him.

Akaya told him that he was weird outside of tennis too. 

His bluntness had been amusing but not terribly endearing. Yanagi felt it safe to assume that was not when his attraction started.

However, he supposed that was when their relationship status outside of tennis was upgraded from "acquaintanced teammates" to "burgeoning friends". At least, Akaya seemed to see it that way, as after that one outing he persistently invited Yanagi to come with him and Marui and Jackal again. He thought there were some games Yanagi would enjoy dissecting for data.

Appreciative of the thought, Yanagi began accompanying Akaya and his babysitters on an average of once a week. Yanagi mastered an average of three games each time he went there, starting with the simplest ones. 

Akaya began to find his habit of easy mastery grating, and kept challenging him to rounds of more complex games, which Yanagi mastered with equal ease, and so Akaya began inviting him to the arcade a little aggressively, insisting he was finally going to find a game he couldn't master in an afternoon.

Yanagi quickly found himself enjoying those visits to the arcade, and increasingly enjoying Akaya's company. His competitive streak proved to be interesting outside of tennis, his laid-back attitude made him take Yanagi's quirks in stride, and his knowledge of video games was thorough enough to make others classify him as a bit of a nerd, which was interesting to listen to.

At that point, it was still a platonic sort of fondness. Yanagi still hadn't found when his attraction began. This exercise wasn't over yet.

He thought that going from the time when the base of friendship was established, he should then look at specific instances when he thought of Akaya as cute. Then the initial moment of attraction might finally come to his notice.

He began to think of the times they spent in that arcade, first. Akaya insisting that Yanagi win a specific anime mascot plushie for him was cute enough that Yanagi indulged him. When he congratulated Yanagi for mastering the zombie shooting game on his fourth try, Yanagi found that his excited hand gestures were quite cute too.

Yanagi frowned to himself. That was all very endearing and pleasant to think about, but he had realized that the arcade wasn't the correct location. He had accompanied Akaya to places other than that arcade before the attraction started, he was sure of that now.

Perhaps recalling those outings would bring something to mind. 

The first occasion that he and Akaya were alone together was when Akaya found himself craving ice cream during an arcade visit. 

He had dragged Yanagi away from gathering data on a talented Dance Dance Revolution player and insisted that Yanagi pay for the food because he was the senpai in this situation. Yanagi almost invited Marui and Jackal along as well, but Akaya told him that would ruin the fun, and as such they became a party of two for the day.

On that occasion, Yanagi observed Akaya helping himself to the dessert cheerfully, in a way that it ended up on his chin and cheeks constantly. Yanagi wiped away the drops for him, and Akaya had smiled, and perhaps Yanagi felt the stirs of something then, but he could no longer remember.

If he could not remember the details, that must not have been it.

Their second outing away from both school and the arcade was in a local park with a tennis court.

Yanagi had intel that suggested some Fudoumine regulars could be in the area that day, and when he announced his intention to gather data on them if they appeared, Akaya invited himself along.

No Fudoumine members showed up, in the end. There had been only a thirty-six percent chance. But Akaya was so disappointed that Yanagi felt compelled to make it worth his while. They went to a manga café that was three and a sixth blocks away, where they idly discussed the sorts of fiction they liked.

That was a very platonic incident, in hindsight. Yanagi hit his hand lightly for getting off-topic.

Their third outing together was two weeks and three days later, Yanagi remembered. They had gone to the street courts nearest Rikkai after school, because they were doubles partners now, and Seiichi had ordered them to enhance their combination outside of practice.

They found themselves staring across the courts at Sadaharu, a three-point-nine percent chance encounter that Yanagi hadn't considered much before it happened. Considering Sadaharu's location, the chances were one hundred percent that he was travelling around to gather data.

In spite of himself, Yanagi found himself tensing up at the sight of him.

Akaya, seemingly more perceptive than usual, suggested they skip tennis and go to some bookstore, because Yanagi-senpai liked reading really old books, and where they did their doubles bonding didn't matter, right?

Yanagi had nodded tersely and they left the tennis courts entirely. After a block, he was able to forget about Sadaharu for the time being and marvel at how Akaya had actually remembered his reading preferences. Previous data suggested he was not good with details.

When they reached the nearest bookstore, Akaya complained that it was dusty, but did not complain of boredom, even when Yanagi went on a tangent about the historical importance of the writers of the Heian period.

He re-evaluated Akaya's emotional maturity level later that night. Before, he would have predicted Akaya's immediate response to the situation at the tennis court to be to challenge Sadaharu to a bloody tennis match. But in reality, Akaya had known that Yanagi would prefer to simply leave. 

Yanagi remembered a moment of realization that day, that he had come to regard Akaya as a close friend as opposed to simply a friend, and that Akaya's importance to him still had yet to grow.

Yanagi must be getting close to the moment of truth now. He tried to recall their fourth outing outside the arcade with more urgency than before.

Thankfully, the memory came back to him quickly. 

He and Akaya had gone to a festival with the other regulars. 

He counted this among his and Akaya's outings because the team got separated at one point or another. It wasn't an official structured outing, and Marui wouldn't leave the food stands while Jackal wouldn't leave Marui, so separating had been the natural course of action.

He and Akaya, sent off together by a smiling Seiichi, had wandered around aimlessly. Sure, Yanagi had known everything about the festival they were attending, and he had calculated the ideal times to go to every stand, but Akaya did not like timetables and Yanagi felt like indulging him.

Yanagi found that he remembered every detail of this outing. 

He remembered the buzz of the crowd surrounding them, the soft glow of the lanterns on everything, the smell of deep-fried festival food in the air, the texture of plain blue yukata Akaya had worn, the fact that Akaya attempted the goldfish game twelve times before Yanagi won it in one go for him, the way Akaya pouted when he did that and commanded him not to win any other games like that because it was like the arcade all over again, and the exact sizes, shapes, and colours of thirty-two of the thirty-three fireworks set off during the final part of the evening.

He did not remember the last firework that went off because he had looked at Akaya's face when it exploded. 

Akaya's mouth had been wide open, stretched into a gigantic smile, and the coloured light reflecting in his eyes gave them this look of pure wonder.

Even afterwards, Akaya didn't stop smiling and he chatted excitedly about how cool it was for about eight minutes and twenty-seven seconds straight.

Yanagi remembered finding it terribly cute.

Ah, that must have been it. The moment the attraction began. Yanagi almost wanted to laugh at himself for how cliché it was.

But remembering the moment in such detail like that, all he could do was smile to himself and write his realization in his notebook, marking it with a pink sticky note for future reference.


End file.
